welcome, shall, to the uss macon islands. my name is lewis loeven and i'm the executive director of the san francisco fleet week association and what a great fleet week we're going to have for 2012. thank you. this is the second time we've had the uss macon islands and i want to thank captain pringle and his entire crew. what a great ship and what a great crew. they turned this swear hanger deck around all right night and turned it into a conference room and it looks absolutely beautiful. thank you, captain, and your entire crew. i'm going to make this short because we're already running a little bit behind schedule, but san francisco fleet week for the third year is organized with i object credible participation from city, civilian agencies from all

around the region and all of us our fabulous united states military, the coast guard has been fabulous in providing assets to protect everybody out on the bay. it is one heck of a logistics program to get this whole program started and here we are the culmination of nearly a year of planning. we've had exercises, we've had lots of meetings down in san francisco up at the marines memorial, this is a fabulous program, we had a great medical exchange yesterday. senior leaders seminar third year in a row has gotten a lot of attention. we have a lot of new people who haven't been here for the past couple years, we have a lot of people who have been here for the last 3 years, and one of the major consistent people who has been behind this whole program is the chairman of the san francisco fleet week association, general -- major general mike myers who i'm going to ask to come up and

make is remarks. >> thank you, lewis. when i accepted the responsibilities for organizing san francisco's fleet week, the guidance given to me by our honorary co-chair was bring the fleet back to fleet week and make it productive with a mission. lewis has played a big part. i would like to introduce the third fleet commander, this is his ship, we're grateful to be on the ship and had the third fleet with us, please help me welcome vice admiral gerald beeman. >> good morning, everybody, thank you so very much for joining us. i know some of you thought i was the warm up band for the rock stars that are going to be here lately. but

honestly it's a great honor to be able to host the third seminar. i would like to thank the san francisco fleet week association for helping put this together and grow this into the nation's largest emergency planning event. i don't know how many of you know it, but as a result of the success that we have had here developing partnerships, folks from this association and the conglomeration of people that take part have been called upon not only other places in the united states, but in fact we have at least one example where around the world they called upon a person from here to help share what we've learned as a group. this next two days, it's not just about the panels. the most important part i think for all of us that we've discovered is the personal relationships, looking each other in the eye, the ability to shake a hand and

look each other in the eye and say we are in this together. it's a wonderful opportunity for each and every one of us to understand the capabilities and limitations that we each bring but i think most importantly for us in the military, it's for you on the civilian side to know it is not uncle sam showing up large and in charge, but rather uncle sam showing up with a multitude of capabilities in a supporting role in hopes that we never have to ememploy it, but better to be prepared like we are than not to be. it's a wonderful opportunity. i encourage each and every one of you to ask questions, take advantage of the opportunity that is so important so if the bell does sound we know who we'll call and who we're going to be working with. thank you so much.

>> folks, i have two more speakers to welcome you all and the last one will be the mayor of our great city, but before i bring him up, i wanted our senior military in the bay area to say a few remarks because the us coast guard provides and enables the safety conditions for us to be able to have fleet week. it's such an important part of fleet week, what the coast guard provides, so i'd like to bring up to the lecturn here vice admiral -- we call him admiral z because i have a hard time pronouncing his name, but he is now the commander of all the coast guard in the pacific, so admiral z >> mike, thank you very much and good morning, everybody. just to follow on admiral

beeman's remarks, this is really all about building partnerships. and i'll go back to when i was the federal on scene coordinator for the deep water horizon oil spill with 50,000 responders, many of them military, but also faith-based. we had 35 federally recognized tribes, we had perish presidents that all have an equal voice and when you have any response this is also reality tv reality tv will try to triangulate against the first responders so it's critical you have that partnership built up front and going forward, recognizing any plan we come up with probably will not survive the first shot in any campaign. but the partnerships must endure because unity of effort and unity of command are critical in anything that we do. what better way to showcase what our united states navy and our marine corps, our sea-going

services, bring to the table in an emergency response, but recognize that they also have another mission to do, macon island just came off a 7-month deployment, this is an era when we're pivoting to the pacific. the ring of fire is also in the pacific. over 35,000 on average fatalities a year over 35 billion dollars worth of damage and we see that year in and year out with tsunamis of catastrophic proportions. today the coast guard is dealing with the debris from that tsunami as it comes ashore here in the state waters as well. just it close on admire beeman's remarks, i think it's critical not just the work here at seminar but over a cup of coffee exchanging business cards because at the end of the day it's the partnerships that mufrt endure at time of crisis. thank you to the macon island

for this show of force during this third fleet week. >> i'd like to bring up the mayor of the great city and county of san francisco. what a difference he's made as the mayor of san francisco. he certainly has welcomed fleet week, he's welcomed the fleet and marines and mayor lee, we can't thank you enough for your support for everything we're trying to do. please help me welcome mayor ed lee. >> thank you, general myat. good morning, everybody, welcome to the uss macon island. it's my pleasure to be here with you this morning on the green ship of our u.s. navy. it's very appropriate that it be here heading the fleet in san francisco. admiral beeman, thank you very much for your leadership. it is impressive what we are

accomplishing. just two years ago, we started with an understanding that our military, the coast guard, the u.s. navy, the marine corps, had something that we really needed. it's called logistics expertise. and we recognized that and with the help of our fleet week association, with the help of our honorary chair, former secretary of state george scholtz, along with senator feinstein who started fleet week, we began to appreciate in addition to appreciating the men and women in uniform and the wonderful attributes of having fleet week and the blue angels and the parade of ships, we could also be working on something very important to this city. all across the world there are examples after example and i know the men and women and

leadership of the uss macon know this after their tour of duty these past months, all over the world there are disasters and emergencies that we are responding to and that you have become the humanitarian assistance and the disaster relief that is absolutely needed. why not practice that here? and so two years ago we gathered with our own departments from the port of san francisco to our sheriff to our police and fire, led by our emergency management division, getting all of our departments from public works to our mta and others together to understand what our roles were and to begin something that i think other cities are beginning to understand are invaluable, creating the relationships, doing the table top exercises and then taking that further step of progress that we've done that i saw personally yesterday is going

from table top exercises, going from green our counterparts and all the different ranks and understanding their roles to actually practicing what we do. and i can't think of a department more than our public health department who has the best trauma center in the bay area in san francisco through our general hospital to then be with me yesterday and understand how an emergency surgical pop-up tent can be created in less than one hour on the beach of san francisco. and to know and to look these people in the eye, the people from the u.s. navy that put up these tents and set up the gurnies and understand they can treat 50 people at a time, 20 percent in absolutely critical condition, and have a 99

percent recovery rate for everyone who goes through that, no matter what their wounds might be. this is what we practice, this is what i gained from the exercise yesterday and of course i join the core russ of people who saw the amphibious hover deliver its ability on the beach to look at the clock and see how fast it did, to see the unveiling of those logistics on hand with the people involved. these are the practices now as our public wants it know more and more what are we doing to prepare beyond the table top exercises? we are practicing these very vital practices, these things that will really help save lives, creating more relationships, bringing in more partners. we have all the city agencies that are here today. we're also bringing in other agencies whether it's caltrans or national park service, that would be part of this. whether it's other federal government entities that we work with, of

course our local coast guard, people who are here every day that need to build these relationships because we are not going to fail our public. too many examples across the world where they known disasters were in front of them and they did not prepare. and this is our opportunity and i am very thankful to our fleet week association for bringing this forward to the u.s. navy for being here to our marine corps and our coast guard, they are all working together to make sure that we can practice what we preach. the most, i think, beautiful thing of fleet week now is not only the appreciation but right down to the neighborhood leaders in our neighborhoods in san francisco, they can have a feeling of confidence that the city is ready. so i want to again thank general myett, thank lewis loeven, thank all

the partners. not only are we doing it here and not only are we receiving this, but we're also sending our teams to places like camp pepblgds done and changing information with top brass so they can get information as well. it's a two-way street, it's always been so. i know we have a lot of events this week where i'm going to ask the public to take public transit to honor our commitment to the city just as we are doing here on the uss macon. the fleet week celebration of our city of course will celebrate the blue angels and the parade of ships but i think the public will appreciate even more how ready we are and the practice we are doing. thank you very much. again, i salute the men and women in uniform that are here to help us, that are here to practice what we preach and again also to all the different agencies that are working together with

us. thank you very much for being here, happy fleet week. . >> when people ask me about our mayor, i tell them, he gets it. you can see that from his remarks just now. he knows what this is about. and a lot of other people get it, too, and i want to tell you after fleet week the senior leaders seminar last year, the word got around. and in november there was a massive earthquake in have an, turkey, and the city of san francisco and the san francisco fleet week association were asked to send a team to do an assessment of their earthquake and their preparations or lack of preparation. so the word is getting out. seattle invited us to come up and talk to them about incorporating that, this

program, into their fleet week. so the word is getting out. i'd like to tell you just a story that i've told before to some of you but it relates very much to the next panel that we have here. back in april of 1992, i was commanding the first marine division and we had been to the gulf war and we had a lot of parades and we were feeling pretty good about things and on 30 april, 1992, the results of the rodney king trial were announced. two days later, we found the first marine division deployed to compton and watts and one of the most horrific sights i'd ever seen. it was the largest riot in u.s. history. 3,000 people were injured, 60

people were killed, and we actually ended up at one point in time having to use live ammunition. but once we did, the bloods and the krips and the gangs there realized we were serious. the reason we got involved is because they learned none of the police departments within los angeles could talk to each other on their communications gear. they had a different piece of equipment in the los angeles county sheriff's department than the police department or the compton police or the watts police or whoever. we ended up, we were providing radios so they could talk to each other. and i said that that should never happen again. we should have interoperatable communications. there's some that say we aren't any better off today than we were in 1992. we don't

know, but we had an exercise, part of this fleet week preparation exercise, put on by the department of emergency management and it involved a lot of various agencies and we looked at the command of control situation and the command of control situation was an important one because you realized in 1992 the situation got so grim that the governor of the state then asked dod to take it over. so our chain of command went from my headquarters at the 7th infrapb tridivision headquarters right back to the pentagon. we said that should never happen again. so we looked at command of control relationships in this exercise. so we're going to bring up the next panel and this exercise was conducted in august and we're going to take a few minutes to get the panel up

here and we'll have the panel moderator introduce us, john vaughan from harris, but if any of you need to make a head call, behind these screens we have men and women's heads, restrooms for those of you who don't know the term. behind those screens. rich is telling me i'm going back wrong end of the ship, back that way behind the screens, so feel free to go back there. so let's take a few minutes now and bring the panel up and the panel moderator, john vaughan thank my name is john vaughan, i'm

from harris corporation. we're delighted a sponsor again this year of san francisco fleet week. our focus, if you had an opportunity to see on the way in the demonstration, is on interoperatability. this has been a challenge as lts general just mentioned. in the past we have been blocked in interoperatability by the use of different frequencies, by the use of different digital formats and been challenged in a number of different ways. i guess since those days there has been one important improvement, one technological improvement, that we use expensively to create interoperatability and that is ip networks built of sdparate systems and the network allows us to operate. as you see from our demonstration as you checked in this morning, as you

ridge stered this morning, san francisco talking it oakland, talking to this ship, talking over cellular, talking across and with different networks. the challenge for interoperatability is beginning to be met, i would say, the challenge for interoperatability at the same time is about to get much greater. we as a nation are about to embark on the most ambitous, most challenging communications endeavor that we have ever attempted, which is the creating of purse net, the public safety broad band or 4g network. and with that brings the promise of new challenges for sure in interoperatability and new capabilities that we have never had before. in fact, no other country is as far along as we are, even though we're just starting. what we see is the opportunity there to interoperate in many

different ways than just voice as we have in the past. the challenge for us in the future will be the challenge of connectivity where we can connect wide band or narrow band voice or data or video across different systems. again, all of this is based on using internet protocol. one of the things that we at our company does is provide a relay in an unmanned vehicle to fly in the vicinity of a ship like this and provide over the horizon communications. very high level communications. but importantly, it also integratings and interoperates narrow band, broad band, voice, data and video. and so the challenges of the new systems that are coming out and will be coming out over the next few years are great, but so are the benefits. we know

the technological answer, as i mentioned, is ip, internet protocol. but i suggest we might use those initials for two things that are equally important as an introduction to this panel. one is, as we've already heard, is interpersonal. ip also stands for enter personal and those relationships are very important as we have heard here. the other thing is the importance of planning. the planning that's also going on and as you will hear in a few minutes from the panel, is extremely important. i thank you for your attention and at this point i'm going to turn the panel over to rob dudun to introduce our panel members. >> good morning, i feel a little bit like the opening act at a show here. so we're going to see where this goes.

i have a really, really good panel for this one. because i get to talk about what we've done. and i get to have these guys up here, i'm going to hand off to my no. 2, vijon karemi, and we're going to have a discussion. my job is to tell you how we got here. that's what i'm going to try to do. some of you know the history, some of you are new to the process, but that started about the idea that general myat and the mayor talked about. let's make this more than an air show. in 2010 we did this senior leader seminar and the first thing we did was let's talk about how we relate formally. that was, i like to call that the wire diagram year because we all sat up here and we had local, state, federal and military and we walked through how each of us relates, what are the limitations, what are the laws, what are the rules of

engagement, how do we actually work together? and that sets the stage for everything that has come beyond that. the big exchange of information at a very high level and it quickly led to the conclusion we all understand the policy of it, but as was the case in a lot of situations, we don't get past the diagram. we don't get past the policy page and the wire die agrams and if we want to make this meaningful we need to get past the next level and we need to start stretching the boundaries and start talking it each other in as close to real world situations as we can so we each understand how the other operates, what the limitations are, what the boundaries are, and from there we can start to grow as institutions and try to make this institutional knowledge and not just individual relationships. so in 2011, we took it to the next step and we took a table

top and we picked medical surge. a lot of people looked at that and said, well, there's there's this and there's that and the military comes in much later than everybody else and all that's true. as we look at this panel and look at the scenarios for this year, i'm going to say the same thing i said last year. look beyond the scenario. what we're looking at is how do we relate, how do we work together. that's what this is really about. in my opinion it is incumbent upon us as a local community to understand where our gaps, are understand what we will need in a time of crisis and understand how best to dovetail with the resources coming in. the military does what the military does and they can be incredible flexible. they can bring a lot of stuff to bear that we can never even imagine. it's our

job to understand where those hard stops are for them and how they are best suited, because we can build out our plans in anticipation of that. in the case of, say, medical surge, we can look forward and say this is what we're going to need. we're going to need help with patient movement. we're going to need help with the chronickly ill because by the time the military arrives, a day or so into it at least, even with the best of plans, we're going to have to start figuring out how do we manage those chronic patients and you know what, moving stuff is what they're really good at. moving patients in particular, they are amazing. so we start to look at things like that. as we look through this and we start to talk, remember it's beyond the scenario, it's the relationship. this year we decided to test, based on last year's lessons, last year the table top on the broad topic of medical surge,

generated a top of lessons learned. a lot of areas to explore. one of the biggest ones was, here's a surprise for you, interoperatable communications. it always works out that way. the other was command control. how do we operate together at the field level. it's one thing to have all the executive staff working together, it's another thing to take our middle managers from all the organizations and throw them into a situation where they have to work together. because the way we work together on the civilian side and the way you work together on the military side is slightly different. but we're all very intelligent individuals out there and they know how to solve problems. again, it's our job to understand what the limitations are. it's our job to understand that what is given in terms of giving an asset an order and we may look at